New dwarf planet announced

[insert_name]

Well looks like another dwarf planet has been found, Link

[Scotius]

Finding new obiects by taking photos of the sky periodically and looking for moving obiects? Why this guy pretend it's something innovative? Pluto was found this way by Clyde Tombaugh more than eighty years ago.

[benzman]

Modern astronomers use an electronic version of the blink comparator used by Clyde Tombaugh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_comparator

 

[PB666]

3 hours ago, Scotius said:

Finding new obiects by taking photos of the sky periodically and looking for moving obiects? Why this guy pretend it's something innovative? Pluto was found this way by Clyde Tombaugh more than eighty years ago.

It was a very good eighty years ago too.

Distance size. if the distance doubles the effective detection limit is 4 fold smaller. But the light is also reduced 4 fold and the effective luminpscity is 16 fold less as well as smaller in size with distance from saturn (on average) and this well outside plutos orbit are, in general, more difficult to see than pluto. 

 

[Streetwind]

Note that the object has been identified, measured and officially accepted as a solar system object. However, it has not yet been declared a dwarf planet. Either the media or the discovery team just made that up.

The object is significantly smaller than Ceres (the smallest dwarf planet to date). It will be up to the IAU to decide, while they are naming it, if it fulfills the criteria for a dwarf planet. It's possible that it might be given a different classification - a protoplanet like Vesta, or something else entirely. We don't know yet. So for now, it's just a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), albeit a decently sized one.

The reason the article goes on about the discovery method being special is because the instrument it was found with wasn't designed for the purpose. It's supposed to look at distant galaxies, not at solar system objects. In fact, the latter would classify as unwanted noise. But one of the scientists had some students visit him and needed to keep them busy, so he came up with this idea to have them look through the dataset for solar system bodies, as an exercise. He thought they would find known ones. They found an unknown one instead.

[kunok]

The interesting question is, is this minor object's orbit compatible with the planet nine predicted perturbations?

[Streetwind]

The Wikipedia page has all the relevant orbital paramters to answer that question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_UZ224

Unfortunately I am not good enough at this to do it myself

[The Raging Sandwich]

On 10/11/2016 at 10:52 AM, insert_name said:

Well looks like another dwarf planet has been found, Link

It actually wasn't found all too recently, it's been seen since maybe two or three years ago.

[insert_name]

2 hours ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

It actually wasn't found all too recently, it's been seen since maybe two or three years ago.

They only announced the discovery recently though.

 

[Streetwind]

More to the point, they first had to determine its physical properties (hard for something small that's really far away), and its orbital properties (hard for something that moves so slowly). Then they had to submit that to the IAU's Minor Planet Center. Then the Minor Planet Center had to independently confirm everything that was submitted.

The news came now because the Minor Planet Center confirmed and accepted it, making it a candidate for receiving a name and potentially (but not assuredly) dwarf planet status.